


(We Found Love) In a Hopeless Place

by casey_sms (shinygreenwords), shinygreenwords



Category: The Social Network
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Drama, Dysfunctional Family, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-27
Updated: 2011-11-27
Packaged: 2017-10-26 14:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/284224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinygreenwords/pseuds/casey_sms, https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinygreenwords/pseuds/shinygreenwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Small town!AU. In which Mark lives in a trailer but Eduardo doesn't, even though he's at the trailer park a lot anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(We Found Love) In a Hopeless Place

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning/kinks:** Drama, romance, Eduardo's dad is a dick.
> 
> This is supposed to be a fill for a [prompt](http://mark-eduardo.livejournal.com/368440.html?thread=2761016#t2761016) at the [](http://mark-eduardo.livejournal.com/profile)[**mark_eduardo**](http://mark-eduardo.livejournal.com/) [prompt fest](http://mark-eduardo.livejournal.com/368440.html) for a fic based on Rihanna's music video [We Found Love](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg00YEETFzg) but I based it on the lyrics instead and then wrote some more. Oops. So the drugs and dysfunctional relationship one for the OP is [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/284231) ;) Anyway, what an original title Y/MFY? I still don't know what kind of AU this is. It's a small town/trailer trash/high school/semi-Mysterious Skin!AU? Whatever. So all you need to know is Eduardo and Erica are siblings and Mark is in love with Eduardo who has issues. O wait that's kinda canon lol. Idek /zuckershrug. Much thanks to [](http://princewardo.livejournal.com/profile)[**princewardo**](http://princewardo.livejournal.com/) as beta, all remaining errors are mine.

“If you’re looking for Eduardo, he’s not here,” Erica says without looking up.

She’s zipping up a bag with a brand that Mark would know if he gave a shit about stuff like that. Eduardo would know but that’s a previous life for him. Now he has to wear clothes that are two seasons old and apparently that’s a really bad thing. These are things Mark has learnt from Eduardo about rich people by osmosis. Eduardo says he’s not rich but then again he has _standards_. Eduardo is generally a nice guy, his mother thinks he’s ‘a real gentleman in the making’, but Mark thinks that when it comes to stuff like that, he is totally a pretentious douchebag. But he’s Mark’s only friend in Harvard and that means something to Mark even though he’s not sure what exactly it means. It doesn’t bother him since it’s not like he hasn’t got the time to figure it out.

“Right,” Mark says, turning to go, his flip-flops smacking against the cracked dirt as he turns his bike around.

“You better be careful,” Erica sing-songs knowingly as she lights a cigarette, leaning against the boot of her car in a midriff top. She blows the smoke upwards expertly, the curling smoke ring hovering like a fuzzy halo. Her eyes are smoky and dark and she looks exotic, beautiful even, in the stark daylight but if she asks Mark will say, yeah, like an exotic dancer. Because she’s Eduardo’s older sister and she is more like a sister to Mark than anything. Mark can still remember when she didn’t wear makeup and she was just a bossy girl who had been friends with Mark’s sisters. She’d been an annoying suck up who liked to tell him and Eduardo what to do because that’s what siblings do. That was until Mark had figured out what she’d been really been doing in the backseat, under the bleachers at school, with the hall monitor in charge of the doors.

“Of what?” Mark says, one hand shielding his eyes and the other on the handlebars of his beat-up bike.

“I’m serious, Mark. I’ve seen the way you look at him.”

Mark doesn’t even try to front because whatever. “He’s a good looking guy. He is also my best friend.”

“You don't have to tell me,” Erica says with a light laugh but Mark is not mad because she’s not laughing at him. “We got it lucky in the gene pool. But I know all of Eduardo's secrets and there's shit there you don't even want to know about. Trust me. Once I'm gone, you'll be all Eduardo has and you have to understand one thing. My parents, they don’t- Eduardo is- He’s damaged. Where normal people have a heart, Eduardo has a bottomless black hole. And if you don't watch out, you will fall in and get lost forever. ”

“Poetic,” Mark says sarcastically. “You should write that in your Barbie diary.”

“Listen, Mark,” Erica says, taking a deep drag. “I’m going to be the forgettable one because I want to be. You know what I think?” She ignores Mark rolling his eyes and keeps going. “Eduardo is going to be un-fucking-forgettable to you no matter what he does. I really hope it’s going to be for the right reasons,” Erica says as she drops her spent cigarette and grinds it under the chunky heel of her boot.

“I’d say see you around but that’d be a lie.” Erica shuts the boot of the car and hops in. She doesn’t offer Mark a ride and Mark thinks _bitch_ because Erica isn’t going to get anywhere. Her money will run out and then she’ll realize there’s nowhere to go. She tosses her hair over her shoulder and slips on her sunglasses. “Have a good one, Mark, it was nice knowing you.”

She’s probably going to come back soon and she’ll be a mess but Mark doesn’t say that. Erica has always done what she wants, who she wants. He nods once instead and watches her drive away from Harvard without looking back. Then he swings himself over the seat of his bike and heads home to find Wardo because that’s probably where he is.

The heat is overwhelming and Mark swears because he’s not even halfway there when he can feel the sweat dripping down his back. He can see hazy mirages on the road, it’s that hot.

He’s relieved and sunburnt by the time he spots the familiar “Welcome to Kirkland” sign. It is supposed to say “RV Park” underneath it but someone, most likely Billy, because he’s a dropkick who can’t spell, has duct-taped a board spray-painted with blood red words on top of it. Now it says “TRAYLA TRASH N PROUD.”

Mark blinks the sweat out of his eyes. He sees Eduardo’s ridiculous pouf of hair before he hears him, as usual.

“Hey Mark,” Eduardo says, sounding exasperated. His long fingers are curled around a bottle of aloe lotion.

“Wardo,” Mark grunts as he heaves his bike onto the broken tap on the side of the trailer that serves as a bike rack.

“You need to put some on or this summer is really going to suck,” Eduardo says and he’s already lathering lotion on Mark’s arm like it’s lube.

“Summer always sucks around here,” Mark hisses, drawing out the ‘s’ sounds. The aloe is cold and he really doesn’t need to be thinking about lube. It’s too fucking hot to jerk off. And Wardo is right there.

“I know,” Eduardo says, too solemnly for them to be talking about the stupid weather.

Mark doesn’t know what to say so he holds out his other arm and lets Eduardo drag him inside to the ratty couch. When Eduardo gently touches his tender skin, massaging lightly, the sting of the burn rises to the surface, clashing with the soothing coolness. “Feels good,” Mark says, eyes closed, voice slurred by the soporific stroking as Eduardo pulls at the back of his shirt so he can reach the back of Mark’s neck. Mark buries his face into a musty cushion and muffles a moan. It’s easy for him to say, “Stay.”

“Yeah,” Eduardo says softly. “’Kay.”

It’s too hot for them to do anything, not that there is anything to do anyway, so Mark just sits with Eduardo. They barely touch, just breath in hot air, waiting for the heat to pass.

***

Kirkland is a tiny trailer park on the edge of Harvard, a town with a pretentious name that lacks any such substance. It’s supposedly named after the university so politicians could plug it whilst talking about forging educational ties and empowering poor kids, but really it’s just a fancy name for Bumfuck, Massachusetts.

“My life fucking sucks,” Eduardo says, kicking the already battered trash can he is standing next to.

Mark rolls his eyes because, “It does for everyone.” Sometimes Eduardo can be a bit overdramatic. Mark is quite sure that on the scale of life sucking, Eduardo’s life still passes as a pretty average day for Mark. He’s not being condescending when you consider – is it really that much of a trial to be good-looking and rich, well, richer than at least ninety-five percent of the grade? Which granted, probably isn’t very wealthy, compared to where Eduardo came from. But seriously, Eduardo should have figured out by now that Kirkland doesn’t register anywhere.

Mark saw Christy make a pass at Eduardo at least three times today and okay, she’s kind of crazy, but it’s Eduardo’s problem that he’s not acting on it. He could be getting laid this afternoon, but instead he’s sitting in Kirkland with Mark. Which is confusing because either Eduardo thinks Mark is better than sex (and even Mark wouldn’t rate himself that highly) or Eduardo is kind of stupid (which would really suck because Mark hates stupid people i.e. nearly everyone in this town). Or option C in Mark’s horny brain: Eduardo is gay (and maybe wants to have sex with Mark and yeah, that could explain a lot of things but Mark is going to stop right there.) Mark takes another drink from the bottle before passing Eduardo what’s left of his stolen beer.

“No, I’m serious. I’m done with this,” Eduardo says, taking a long drink and wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

Mark can see the intensity in Eduardo’s eyes before he looks away, his thumb rubbing the mouth of the bottle in absent semicircles. Eduardo says this every day, but Mark can see that he is getting to the end of his rope. It bothers him that Eduardo has been more and more like this since his sister left. And he’s practically living in Kirkland now. Mark thinks he only goes home to do his laundry and take a shower.

“Don’t you feel like you’re made for something better than this?” Eduardo says as he gestures to the mess of trailers and junk scattered around them.

Mark laughs bitterly. At least Eduardo actually lives in a house with a working TV, even if Eduardo won’t let him browse through the extra channels to see if there’s a skin one. Eduardo is here when he wants to be, for everyone else this is where they have to eat, piss, and shit in the same hole. “Yeah,” he says with a one shouldered shrug. “So?”

“I want something better. You know what, I- I _deserve_ something better,” Eduardo says abruptly. “I don’t want to be a disappointment. That’s all I am to him and I’m starting to think that’s all I’ll ever be. Things aren’t going to change. I could be the head of a multinational company and a billionaire, and he’d probably still tell me what I’m doing wrong, that I should be expanding or consolidating my markets, or some shit. All he ever says to me is “son, I think you could be doing a whole lot better if you put more effort into it”. Whatever the fuck that means. It’s driving me crazy. If he says it again, I swear I’ll-” Eduardo waves his hands around in frustration but he doesn’t finish the sentence.

He doesn’t have to say who _he_ is because Mark knows. Things have been like this since he met Eduardo a year and a half ago at the local high school. Rumor is that Eduardo’s father invested in something risky and lost. That he’s moved here to lay low before he tries to be a hotshot again.

Another rumor is that Eduardo’s mother had an affair with someone important in his father’s company and caused a scandal so big that the whole family had to move upstate to get away from it. Mark doesn’t put much stock into rumors because people will say all sorts of shit to make themselves feel better. He doesn’t really care but he knows Eduardo does. And Eduardo was the first person to be nice to him even though he wouldn’t get anything out of it. They were outcasts together. At first Mark never got why Eduardo hung at the trailer park instead of at his own place. Considering what he knows about Eduardo’s father now, if he had a dad like that, he probably wouldn’t want to be around him either.

“He’s a dick,” Mark says, because it’s true.

“Mark,” Eduardo says admonishingly with an undertone of admiration.

Mark knows it’s because he actually said it. He says what Eduardo thinks but still can’t bring himself to say. Mark doesn’t get why Eduardo can’t just say it like it is but he guesses it’s because he hadn’t brought up to be polite and tactful like Eduardo had been. In the kind of world where you say one thing and mean something completely different so you won’t hurt anyone’s feelings. Eduardo calls it ‘tact’ but Mark thinks that’s probably a nice way of saying ‘bullshit’. Mark doesn’t bother with bullshit.

Mark’s story, if you want to call it that, is fairly simple: Mark’s father left his mother when he was two and his mother is a waitress at the local bar. Mark knows everyone in town and what their favorite drink is. It doesn’t mean that he’s popular. There definitely is a difference between knowing someone and being friends with someone. Mark would rather have no friends than be friends with assholes like the Winklevii bullies. There is also a difference between being lonely and being alone. Mark is the latter, he manages fine on his own. Mark’s not ‘fine - but really I’m broken inside’. More like ‘fine, so shit happens. I’m dealing with it’.

“Let’s go up top.” Mark doesn’t bother to brush the dirt off his jeans. As long as he doesn’t smash the potted fern hanging on the inside ledge – again – his mom isn’t going to say anything. He tells Eduardo this when he asks. “She loves you, Wardo. She’s not going to be mad at you,” Mark explains, “don’t worry about it.” He goes to the back of the trailer where he uses a ruined amp as a step. There he uses the edge of the window to boost himself up, his toes brushing the leaves of the fern. The fern sways but Mark catches it with his hand and stills it. There’s only a bit of dirt in the sink. Mark grins down at Eduardo.

Eduardo bites his lip and follows.

The view is as good as it gets. Really, it’s more of a view of a lot of useless kitschy shit - but the sunset isn’t bad. The yellow of the sun slowly turning into the bluish purple hues of night is pretty and sometimes brings a cool change to the usually stifling air. Mark swings his feet, drumming his heels against the side of the trailer with a thunk, losing a flip-flop in the process.

“Oops.”

Eduardo puts his palms of the edge of the trailer like he’s going to push himself off to fetch it.

“Leave it, Wardo,” Mark says, throwing his head back. “It’s going to be there when we get back down.” He touches his ear to his shoulder on each side and cracks his neck.

“Gross, Mark,” Eduardo says with entirely too much fondness for a comment expressing disgust.

They fall into a comfortable silence as they watch the last rays of sunlight disappear in a flash of gold.

“I wish I could run away from this shithole town,” Eduardo says with a sigh. He bumps his shoulder against Mark’s as he stretches in the evening twilight. “I’m so fucking sick of being here and going nowhere. There’s nothing but shit here.”

“Hey,” Mark says with mock hurt but he doesn’t look away from Eduardo.

“You’re the only reason I’m here. I’m here for you.”

Eduardo’s emotional outbursts make Mark feel uncomfortable sometimes, but this is one of the times that it makes Mark feel really awesome. Eduardo’s earnest affection is secretly one of the reasons why Mark likes being friends with him. Best friends.

“I know,” Mark says, voice flat as always but he doesn’t push Eduardo’s head off his shoulder. Instead, he puts an arm around him. If he feels Eduardo’s shoulders shake, he holds him tighter.

It doesn’t take long for the inevitable to happen.

Eduardo dates Christy for a while, gets a shitty job at the local diner - much to his father’s displeasure - whilst Mark messed around with Alice. She’s convenient and she helps him get a job which involves typing shit into a computer that actually pays better than collecting old cans and bottles for spare cash. It’s not that Mark and Eduardo have a falling out. They just get really busy, and Eduardo doesn’t have time between school, girlfriend and job to hang out with Mark. Which is fine because Mark has school, a fuck buddy and a job which works just as well.

***

It’s been a while since Eduardo turned up but Eduardo is back. Now.

Mark has to blink the sleep from his eyes. but it’s definitely him, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his pants, his head down, hair a mess and he still looks…nice. Eduardo is not offering an explanation or an apology, even though he was the one who turned up in his beat-up Pinto with the weird cloudy yellow headlights that he’d scraped up to buy with his savings. His father wouldn’t buy him a car.

He raps on the broken fly screen of Mark’s window, whispering his name.

“Wardo, what- what are you doing here?”

Eduardo shrugs, keeping his eyes to the ground.

“Look at me.”

It is then that Mark sees. He winces.

“Shit, Wardo. Let me get you some ice,” Mark says, rolling out of his lumpy bed, feeling very awake and cold all of a sudden.

“I have to go,” Wardo says abruptly, sounding far away even though he’s only a few meters from Mark, separated by a flimsy door.

“Okay.” Mark unlatches the door. “Just let me get you some ice.” He moves the brick with the side of his foot so it’ll prop the door open and not bang shut because then he’ll never hear the end of it from the grumpy hippy old couple in the trailer parked next to them. They’ll probably fuck really loudly in revenge.

There isn’t any ice but he has a packet of frozen peas and he thinks it’s probably better than the slab of mystery meat in a freezer bag. “Here,” Mark says, shoving the bag at Eduardo because his fingers are already going numb.

Eduardo doesn’t take it. “Mark, I gotta go.”

“Yeah,” Mark replies, irritated. “So take it.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Eduardo says, pulling at his hair. “I have to _go_.”

Mark’s eyes widen as he gets the implication behind the words. “Oh.”

“Come with me,” Eduardo says, teeth wearing at his split lip.

The logical part of his mind tells him that they’re not going to get anywhere. Whatever money they have between them is going to be gone fast. They’re going to be broke, high school dropouts and it’s going to suck. The other part of his mind thinks _I need you_ and _I’m here for you_ and _I’ve missed you_ , and suddenly it all makes sense. He has to try. They have to try. And maybe they will fail, and maybe they’ll have to come back, but so what?

He pulls Eduardo in by the front of his shirt and presses his lips against Eduardo’s. Eduardo makes a surprised sound and almost topples backwards but he kisses Mark back with a hunger that sends shivers through Mark. Their tongues tangle and Mark can taste the desperation and the hope.

“Where are we going?” Mark says, a little breathlessly.

“Away,” Eduardo says with a smile, as he reaches to take Mark’s hand.


End file.
